In the commercial or fast food restaurant business it is common practice to pre-prepare various food items in anticipation of customer demand. However, it is also desirable that each customer receive the ordered food item in an appropriate warm and palatable condition. To facilitate this goal, many commercial or fast food operations precook at least a portion of the various food items on the menu and upon receiving an order from a customer, heat or rethermalize the prepared portion, complete the assembly of the final food item and deliver it to the customers. The heating or cooking or rethermalization typically requires the operator to place the precooked food item into a conventional microwave oven and then select an appropriate intensity and duration setting. Such a system is labor intensive and is conducive to operator error. If the food item is heated for a unnecessary long period of time the final product may be overcooked or soggy either of which diminishes its general acceptability to the customer. If the food item is heated for a period of time that is too short, the final product may be undercooked or not warm which also diminishes its general acceptability to the customer. Thus, the prior known systems rely upon operator discretion in selecting the appropriate intensity and duration for the heating of each food item. Since the intensity and duration of the heating is at the operator's discretion it is difficult to assure consistent quality of food items to the customers. In addition, the individual heating process is both labor intensive and time consuming which both increases the cost and delays the delivery of the food item to the customer.
There are known microwave ovens which use conveyor belts to deliver the food item within the oven cavity. However, these systems do not have doors on the microwave oven which requires the oven to be sufficiently large to prevent microwave energy from escaping or require special chokes to contain the microwave energy. These known systems also require operator interface with the oven to set the appropriate intensity and duration of each cook cycle. Accordingly, it would be desirable to have a pass through oven system which identifies each food item to be rethermalized, uses a conveyor belt to properly position each food item within the oven, automatically sets the cooking cycle of the oven to correspond to the identified food item and then removes the food item after rethermalization.